When is the last time you talked to a kid? If you have children 10 and under this does not apply to you. I’m talking to those of you with children that are teens, in their twenties and older. Last week I worked at our churches summer camp and I got the opportunity to have conversations with kids. It is something invigorating about being surrounded with people who take joy in ice cream sprinkles. Children will share stories with all the details, and I mean all the details they have no irony in their game just pure honesty. The interesting thing is that when you speak only to adults you speak “adult”, but you do not realize it until you are talking to children. I was working with children that were between 3 and 6. We were doing and art project and after it was completed I asked each of the children to bring up their design and share it with the class. As they came up I said now her design is this or his design is that. We actually shared all 25 designs with the class. I felt satisfied they did the project and they understood the project, but at the end of the project one little girl held up her hand to ask a question. She asked “what does the word design mean?” I thought for a moment and used the age appropriate word “picture”. I shared this story with some friends who all cracked up. The moral of the story is you are not effectively communicating if the audience does not understand you. I admire the little girl that asked for clarity and from that point on I caught myself when I would revert to adultspeak and use kid speak when appropriate, and I must say I enjoyed my time in the truly honest world of “kids”.

I am sick of the Casey Anthony story. The media has covered this story for 3 years. The murder of 2 year old Caylee Anthony was a tragedy, but sadly Caylee is not the only child in this country that has been murdered. From the amount of coverage this story has garnered one would think she was. Sure the mother has proven to be a liar and she will seemingly say anything about anyone to save herself, but enough is enough. This blow by blow 24/7 coverage of this story is way over the top. There are missing children’s cases that go unsolved for years. Casey Anthony did not report her daughter as missing for 31 days and now we know she knew the fate of her daughter all along, but their real cases of missing children that can hardly get a mention on one network channel let alone the attention the Anthony case has gotten. Last year in Baltimore Phylicia Barnes, a 16 year North Carolina honor student was visiting Baltimore and she went missing. The Baltimore police tried hard to get the networks interested in her case, but they were met by brick walls. NBC and CNN did cover the story, the first time to say she was missing and the last time to say her body had been found in a local river. If the Barnes story had even gotten 1/4 of the Anthony coverage perhaps the ending might have been quite different. The sad fact is that the Anthony story is the preoccupation of the networks and it is simply not fair.

Gloria James was arrested for assaulting a hotel employee. She was upset because it was taking him too long to get her car. She became combative and struck the worker. Police said she smelled of alcohol. This is not her first arrest. In 2006 she was arrested for driving drunk. “The officers said James smelled of alcohol and she appeared to be disoriented, Edwards said. She struggled with police as they attempted to put handcuffs on her. They put her in the back seat of the housing authority car and she kicked out a window, Edwards said. James was taken to a police station, where she refused to take breath or sobriety tests, Edwards said.”* She has put her son in a very precarious position. He can elect not to comment on the story but it is still news. Gloria James is too old for these drunken shenanigans. She needs to be an asset and not a liability. James has endured enough bad press this year and he does not need his mother creating more.

On Easter Sunday last year in Atlanta, Aimee Michael was involved in a hit and run accident. She caused the death of 5 people. Michael is a 24 year old college graduate. Instead of staying at the scene she fled and drove the damaged car home. Her mother had the damaged car repaired and a neighbor called the police when she heard reports of the missing car on television. When the police arrived they smelled new paint and determined that this was the car involved in the crime. Michael was found guilty and sentenced to 50 years in prison. She will serve 36 and the remainder she will be on probation. Her mother Sheila will serve 8 years for her involvement in the incident. This is a tragic situation on all fronts, 5 lives are lost and a promising college graduate will be a senior citizen when she gets out of prison, but why did the mother try to cover up the crime? As a mother we feel the need to help our children, but at what point do we really demand that our children act like an adult? Legal experts that have followed the case say if Michael’s had stayed on the scene or turned herself in she might have been facing 6-12 months in prison, but that is not the case now.